Hey, Bales: 12 Days of Christmas (letter)

December

In which friends visit, Elizabeth completes a personal goal, and CHRISTMAS HAPPENS!!

Happy 12th day of Christmas! Here is the last installment of our 12 Days of Christmas letter. December started slowly with my monthly trip to San Diego right in the middle of the month. I was able to do some air sampling at the boarder with my officemate Nima, and we also met with a university reporter to talk about our research (now in the San Diego Union Tribune, and the NSF news site!). I also worked on applying for jobs, and refining a research study I'm running with one of my lab-mates.

Air sampling equipment.

I was staying with my officemate Sarah and we got together with one of the other guys from our lab for dinner and board games one night which was really fun. I miss living away from them, I have a pretty sweet lab.

I was also able to spend a few evenings at Disneyland which made me super happy because I hit my personal goal of 24 visits this year (This is perfectly normal... um... maybe... I have to go now...). I went with Sarah from my lab and David from Nathan's lab, as well as a couple of girls who I know through Sarah. It was really fun and everything was decorated really nicely. I also got to see the candlelight vigil for the first time which was super pretty and nice. The night is was there it was hosted by Dick Van Dyke and he did all the readings. He even did a Mary Poppin's move with his umbrella when it started to lightly rain. :) Here's a video snippet I took of him reading and the candlelight choir singing.

When I came back to Seattle it was almost Christmas time and we started the season by taking a trip up to the German Christmas Market in Vancouver Canada.

Cheers! Gluwine and Spiced Cider!

We also went to see the Hobbit at the Imax theater. This was our second movie of the year so it was pretty exciting. I think it might actually count for two movies since it was almost 3 hour long! Here we are at the science center waiting for the Imax Theater to open. We got to sit in the handicap seats because Nathan was on crutches due to an "overzealous stair decent" earlier in the week.

Giant table!

Butterfly house

...and then it was Christmas

We spent Christmas Eve at my parent's house with my sister, her fiance Ryan, and our close friend Hillary. Christmas day we had our traditional Dim Sum lunch with my mom's side of the family.

Becca loves Dim Sum!

Nathan photo Bomb!

Then we headed back to the house to prepare Christmas dinner. Nathan's sister and her family were also able to join us and it was really nice to have both sides of the family there.